Getting paid

Something that I see very often in my photography circles, both in social media and amongst photographers I know is a topic about getting paid for our work. How many times have we heard, “Hey we’re having a such and such, could you bring your camera”, or “I have a great idea for blah blah blah would you take the photographs and put the project together?” The first example is clear they have no intention of paying and it often makes me wonder if I’d be invited to such and such if I didn’t have a camera. The next is often disguised as a “When the project sells I’ll pay you a percentage of the sales”. What I frequently see is the person doesn’t have a market for the project and no advanced sales on the said project.

Far too many people believe that taking photographs is merely pointing a camera at a subject and pushing a button. Photo editing, ah it’s like Instagram, just click a filter and you finished. In my opinion, it does little good to try to explain to such people how much work, training, experience, and time goes into taking high-quality photographs. They don’t respect you or your talent. If you approached these same people with the same offer they would never take on the offer, but far too often photographers allow themselves to get caught up in the process.

I preach this topic as often as I can because I have been caught up in this in the past and I’ve got a lot of friends who are photographers who get caught up in the scheme. We all want to do projects that interest us. It can be both challenging and fun, but when it comes to someone approaching you on a project that makes them money, we need to get paid for our work. Look out for these types of schemes.